Why don’t most American PD modes work in the rear aspect? Even in a radar as advanced as the AWG-9, you can’t get a rear aspect look down shot, which seems unrealistic given how I understand pulse doppler radars to work. Was there some source that shows a limit like this? Or is this an attempt at balancing somehow?
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AWG-9 and similar US radars were incredibly advanced…
for the time they were produced.
AWG-9 and the radar on the F-4J were both 60’s designs, and as such used ‘High pulse repetition frequency’ for their pulse doppler. This was the best that could be done at the time but has the downside of not working against a retreating aircraft. Later developments would introduce ‘Medium pulse repetition frequency’ which would solve this issue, this is seen in aircraft like the F-15 and F-16. The F-14 would also recieve this capability with the D variant’s APG-71.
Most aircraft with better radar performance at that tier are simply decades newer than their American counterparts, and have better radars as a result. Specifically, the MiG-23MLD is about 20 years newer than the F-14A despite being .3 BR lower than the American jet.
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Do you have an article or source on the subject?
Its a stupidly complex subject
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/pulse-repetition-frequency)
But it boils down to LPRF (SRC), MPRF (PD-All Aspect), and HPRF (PD-HDN)
I don’t have anything specific I can provide (Since the specifics of this are WAY out of my wheelhouse).
Unlike F-14 Mig-23 wasn’t built around it’s radar tho. F-14 has a small Tokyo apartment room sized radar
Doesn’t matter to be quite honest.
APG-71 fixed the shortcomings that the AWG-9 had - don’t forget the F-14 is meant to have TCS which aids with CW illumination when the AWG-9 struggles to maintain lock.
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Yeah, the Tornado F3’s radar is from the 1990s I think